Networks and Social Change

The third of MillsÂ� criteria specified the necessity to transform opinions into action even against, if necessary, the prevailing system of authority. Although a thorough examination of the relationship between technology, agency, power and social change is beyond the scope of this study, I would like to make some general observations regarding the potential for using networks to promote social change. This attempt is relevant because if, as Mills (1956) suggests, a mass cannot really claim the agency to contest the prevailing authority, then to the extent that networked ICTÂ�s are said to transform publics into masses, they can be said to stand in the way of authentic social change.

At the center of this issue are the ways in which networks in capitalist societies commodify social participation. Borgmann (2004), for instance, rightly points out that commodification is the distinguishing feature of the online social interactions that networks make possible. "To commodify something economically is to pull something that is outside of the market into the market" (p. 64), or in other words, to transform things with no monetary value into things with monetary value Â�or commoditiesÂ� through their subordination to the logic of capitalism. Borgmann suggests that the commodification of the social happens when a social practice is taken out of its localized context and offered in a re-packaged format online. Thus, chatting becomes online chatting, dating become online dating, etc. Borgmann attempts to establish that networked sociality robs communities of their original meaning and commodify the cultural production of social space:

The Internet is culturally commodifying by its nature. It frees us from the limitations of space and time... What happens in fact is that commodification reduces ourselves and those we encounter on the Internet to glamorous and attractive personae. Commodification becomes ...

Activism + Social Transmission

Second Life may or may not be overhyped, and may or may not be the future of the web, but I thought I'd share my experiences with it as I've worked on a documentary about political activism in SL. I've been surprised at how much I'm starting to appreciate its possibilities.

I've taken to heart Clay Shirky's critique that SL has been overly hyped by its creators, and I've been especially interested in Ethan Zuckerman's criticisms of a virtual Camp Darfur, which he argued is an inadequate tool for publicizing such a large scale tragedy; last May he wrote, "given that roughly 100,000 people log into Second Life in a given month - compared to roughly one billion using the Internet as a whole - I suspect people trying to call attention to global issues are better off making a website than a 3D space."

Nevertheless, many people are finding SL useful as a space for activists and organizers to model behavior and create idealized versions of things that are, in reality, broken.

Alain Della Negra and Kaori Kinoshita are artists, working on virtual worlds. They present their last documentary about Second Life univers and users. For those who wish to live in this virtual world, Second Life offers the chance to create, manage and develop their own alternate reality. With these kinds of possibilities, and a population that is in constant growth, Second Life has political ramifications. Who decides the rules applied in this virtual world? What laws, what measures need to be defined? Where is the frontier between the virtual and the real, and how is it transmuted? This documentary aims to elucidate the porous nature between real and virtual worlds.

The Upgrade! Paris sessions are organized by Incident.net. They are public and monthly. Artists, researchers, architects, theorists present during one hour their recent work. Partners: RYBN, CITU, Ars Longa, Upgrade! International.

Rapid!Fire!

Upgrade! Montreal :: !RAPID!FIRE! SESSION! :: In the spirit of community exchange and ageless potluck, UpgradeMTL presents the first in a series of !RAPID!FIRE! sessions dedicated to presenting fresh work in the technology arts.

Presentation is organised in advance with a maximum of 4 presenters per session. Yes that is FIRST COME FIRST SERVE to milk the public brainwaves. Each of the 4 presenters will have 15 minutes to exhibit their work, followed by questions, discussion and much merriment. There will be a projector, soundsystem and net connection. Bring your own laptop or let us know in advance if you need one.

A strong video which provides an informative overview and suggestions for action can be found here. Included is code to copy and paste in your own blog to display the video. It seems very important to me that â��we the digital mediaâ�� act to keep the Internet open before there is only â��they the digital mediaâ�� as happened in the 20th century with analog. Via Lessig Blog

The first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution focuses on the crucial period 1965 to 1980, during which the majority of feminist activism and artmaking occurred internationally. The exhibition includes the work of 119 artists from the United States, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Comprising work in a broad range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art the exhibition is organized around themes based on media, geography, formal concerns, collective aesthetic, and political impulses. Curated for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, by Connie Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

IMAGE: Berwick Street Film Collective, still from Nightcleaners, 1970-1975, Film, Courtesy of LUX

Poetics of Cinema + Narrativity

Poetics of Cinema 2 by Raoul Ruiz
Eleven years separate these lines from the first part of my Poetics of Cinema. Meanwhile the world has changed and cinema with it. Poetics of Cinema, 1 had much of a call to arms about it. What I write today is rather more of a consolatio philosophica. However, let no one be mistaken about this, a healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism. Following his research in Poetics of Cinema, 1 on new narrative models as tools for apprehending a fast-shifting world, Raul Ruiz with Poetics of Cinema 2 makes an appeal for an entirely new way of filming, writing, and of conceiving the image. Read more >>

Narrativity: How Visual Arts, Cinema and Literature are Telling the World Today by Audet Ren, Romano Claude, Dreyfus Laurence, Therrien Carl, Marchal Hugues: To tackle the question of narration in its ruptures and mutations in an age of media culture and influences of video where the ludic and interactive principle is an important element is a way to draw up an inventory of the Nineties, a time when art starts to function like some kind of editing table on which the artists can recreate daily reality. Through that reflection on time, the question is to show how its new languages and new ways of writing are representative of the contemporary imaginary expressed in it and to reaffirm that the work of art is an event before being a monument or a mere testimony, an event which constitutes an experience drawing in the spectator. Read more >>

Jan Chipchase is Principal Researcher in the User Experience Group of Nokia Research Center. A part of his fascinating job is to observe and describe how different cultures use mobile technologies differently - often in ways unintended or unpredicted by the industry that he represents. He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork around the world, such as in Uganda where access to electricity and mobile phones is limited and the user need thus quite basic.

As a consequence of these limitations, people have developed an alternative solutions and service economies, such as phone-sharing systems and battery-charging services (photo) where batteries can be recharged for a relatively small price.

Documentation of this and other of Jan Chipchase's interesting findings are available for download at Nokia Research Center.